The music of spaces

It often happens that a particular period of history captures the imagination of scholars and lay writers alike. A historical clock seems to be at work, throwing up writings with a similar focus at the same time.

For the last four years, Dr Tejaswini Niranjana had been researching the efflorescence of Hindustani classical music in Bombay (as it was then called) from the mid-nineteenth to the midtwentieth centuries. This has now culminated in Making Music Making Space, a multi-disciplinary exhibition mounted at Studio X with collaborators Surabhi Sharma, filmmaker, and Kaiwan Mehta, architect. A few months ago, Aneesh Pradhan, one of our finest tabla players, published a scholarly study, Hindustani Music in Colonial Bombay, focusing on the city’s modernising influence on the world of music during the same period. Again, around that time, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan published C R Kuddyadi’s extremely readable English translation of Majhaa Sangeet Vyasang (My Pursuit of Music), the lively memoir of harmonium player and music composer Govindrao Tembe. Among Tembe’s many musical memories is one of an all-night concert in a private residence in Bombay which ended with an impromptu bhairavi thumri by Maujuddin Khan. “It was like Usha, the goddess of dawn, entering the house quietly,” he writes.

This was a time when multiple historical factors had turned Bombay into a magnet for musicians. After the British quelled the Indian Mutiny in 1857 and deposed Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Moghul, royal patronage for music declined. With the commencement of the British Raj, principalities that had thus far patronised musicians, gradually lost interest in doing so. The British themselves were too apathetic to Indian music to become its new patrons. Meanwhile, Cowasji Nanabhai Davar had established the first Indian cotton mill in Bombay in 1854. Later, the Civil War interrupted supplies of cotton from America, leading to Bombay reaping the benefits of that confrontation. Cotton exports boomed, and by 1870, 13 textile mills were buzzing away in the city. Inevitably this prosperity brought in a surge of small traders and craftsmen. The population of the city, two lakh something in the thirties, rose to 820,000 by 1896. Among the people who thronged to Bombay were musicians from all over the north and west. They came looking for the patronage of shetias, the moneyed men of Bombay’s trading communities and ardent lovers of music. Aneesh Pradhan cites a song that Gauhar Jaan sang at the city’s Town Hall in 1907, praising the munificence of Bombay’s patrons. One of its couplets goes: Mujhe izzat jo baqshee aur jo qadar kee meree /Rahengee yaad mujhko bambai valon ki mahemanee.

From Girgaum to Dadar, the air resonated to the sound of music. Read the memoir of any musician or connoisseur of the time and you will come across names like Trinity Club, Laxmi Baug and Brahman Sabha, the venues where some of the most scintillating music was heard. At Studio X, this swathe of the city is charted in a map that covers one entire wall. At the opposite end, a black box shows a video of the old venues as they are today. Among them is Laxmi Baug where the Making Music Making Space project has been holding Hindustani music concerts. On Friday, this venerable venue was brought to life once again by two young singers, Rutuja Lad, disciple of the late Dhondutai Kulkarni and Reshma Gidh, disciple of Neela Bhagwat.

Introducing the space, the softspoken Mr Sachit Dabholkar pointed to two photographs on the wall flanking the stage. One was of his great grandfather, Narayanrao Dabholkar, after whom the road in Malabar Hill is named; and the other was of his wife Laxmibai, after whom the hall is named. Laxmibai left a legacy of about 30,000 rupees with which she desired a dharamshala to be built. But her son decided to build this marriage-cum-concert hall instead.

Laxmi Baug is a well-maintained space, with a stage on the ground floor and an elegantly balustraded gallery running all round it on the first. This is where greats like Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Sawai Gandharva and Kesarbai Kerkar once sang. Moved by its resuscitation as a space for music by Niranjana and her collaborators, Mr Dabholkar has promised to continue their work. You can’t rewind the clock. Laxmi Baug no longer stands in a musically energised environment. And yet, when Raja Miyan of the Agra gharana sings there on the 25th of this month as announced by Dabholkar, the space will surely add a unique touch to his music.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's own. The opinions and facts expressed here do not reflect the views of Mirror and Mirror does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.